The new boss of the embattled Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has said she “acted on” sexual harassment allegations and “supported staff who needed to raise them”.
Rain Newton-Smith began her role as the new director-general at CBI on Wednesday, telling victims that the organisation had let them down.
It comes after more than a dozen women who worked for the CBI told the Guardian they had been victims of sexual harassment. Two women claimed they had been raped.
Ms Newton-Smith was part of the executive committee during the time of misconduct allegations and had previously been a chief economist for almost nine years at CBI.
In an interview with the BBC, she said: “When I did see things, I acted on them and I supported staff who needed to raise them, and I think that’s critically, absolutely critically important.
“I wouldn’t be coming back into this job if I thought there were things that I had done or hadn’t done or hadn’t acted thoroughly on it.”
Ms Newton-Smith said she didn’t feel there was a toxic culture.
Some have questioned whether Ms Newton-Smith is the right person to lead the organisation through the scandal having been a former executive board member.
The CBI is one of the UK’s most prominent lobby groups and claims to represent 190,000 businesses.
But a swathe of companies have left the group in light of the allegations, including John Lewis, BMW and Virgin Media O2.
The new director-general said the company has to “earn back that trust over the coming weeks and months”.
Ms Newton-Smith is hoping to hold an emergency meeting with remaining members in early June.
She told the BBC: “I am not for a moment saying that the rebuild of our culture and our organisation is going to be complete by early June.
"But what I need to do and show is that we have done enough to earn back trust from businesses.”
Ms Newton-Smith said employees are “hurting” and “need time to heal”.
The decline of the CBI started in early March when the Guardian published accusations of misconduct against then director general Tony Danker.
A month later it revealed that more than a dozen women who worked for the CBI had approached it claiming they had been sexually harassed by colleagues. One woman said she had been raped.
Days later, after outside lawyers had concluded the first part of their report into the CBI, Mr Danker was fired and Ms Newton-Smith was announced as the new boss.
Mr Danker later hit out at the CBI, saying he was the “fall guy” and that his reputation had been “totally trashed”.
Last Friday, the Guardian published a second allegation of rape and a new allegation of stalking against CBI staff.
Within hours, Aviva, one of Britain’s biggest insurers, said it would cancel its membership of the CBI.
This opened the floodgates and by the end of the day dozens of the biggest companies in the UK, including Tesco and John Lewis, had walked away.
Later that evening the CBI decided to suspend all policy and membership activities.
